All That She Had

Whether chasing wealth or reveling in piety, people aspire to ascendency. Looking to Caesar as their frame of reference, they measure everything in terms of progression, growth, movement, or expansion. But that’s not how Scripture works. The biblical God does not seek the growth of his followers. On the contrary, he desires the growth of his teaching, often at our expense. When we become weak and lose everything for the sake of his Gospel, we may fail, but his teaching grows. We may become weak, but as the prophets teach, our defeat becomes a sign of the reality of his power, because it is he, not our enemies, who is the true cause of our crucifixion. Truly, the Bible is the only teaching in human history in which a deity is considered victorious because his city is destroyed, his people are scattered, and his Temple is burned to the ground. It’s no wonder, then, that in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus sits in opposition to the Temple treasury. It’s no wonder that he measures a person’s value, not in terms of Caesar’s coinage, but by their willingness to lose everything for the sake of his victory.